Welcome to another edition of the Good e-Reader week in Review! Today we look back at all of the newsworthy events that have transpired over the course of the last week.
We saw a few different screen technology debut from Samsung, Triton Displays and others! We can say for sure, that the recent advent of E-Readers, Tablets and Smartphones the industry is collectivly spending billions of dollars per year in new color e-ink, LCD and AMOLED display technology.
There was also tons of news regarding the Dell Streak Android Update, Amazons new Digital Publising program for magazines and a whole lot more.
Hanvon to release Color e-Reader with e-ink
Hanvon is the largest eBook reader company in China and one of the first companies to produce a color e-Reader. Although other color e-readers are in development from companies such as LG, Havon was the first to bring to the Chinese Market.
“Color is absolutely critical for E Ink,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Without it, they’ll either be replaced by LCD displays or other competitors.”
Sony Reader Daily Edition PRS-950 is now available
Sony this year has lowered prices on their older e-readers and brought out three new ones! We recently got hands on reviews of the Sony PRS-350 and PRS-650, which weighed in at 5 and 6 inches. The Sony PRS-950 is the follow up to the Daily Edition brought out last year.
The New Sony PRS-950 features a 7 inch screen and WI-FI/3G access! You can interact with the device via its Touch Screen and Stylus. It has a great built in dictionary and can read many popular ebook formats including ePUB.
It retails for around $299 dollars.
Amazon Kindle Publishing for Periodicals beta program for Newspaper and Magazine Publishers
It seems like only yesterday that Amazon released their Beta Kindle for Blogs, which never seemed to really take off. Now they release a new way for digital publishers to issue new magazines via Amazons Store.
Although it only pulls magazines from RSS style feeds on websites and blogs, it does have potential. It offers a high royalty based program, around 75%. It claims to be able to have your magazine displayed on all of the Kindle App Devices such as Android, iPad, iPod Touch, and Blackberry, in the near future.
For the here and now, it only supports e-ink versions for the Kindle, so you won’t be able to convert your lovely full color PDF magazine in glorious color on any color devices, any time soon.
Rogers brings Dell Streak to Canada
Canadians rejoice, you will be able to get your hands on a Dell Streak very soon! Priced at Rogers for around $549 just for the device. They plan to start selling the Streak in the next few weeks, with tiered data plans and device discounts.
It will ship with Android 1.6, but will receive an update in the next few weeks, rumors that users will manually have to update themselves creates waves.
Samsung shows off 4.5 inch flexible AMOLED display
Samsung is leading screen developers in LCD technology and recently unveiled a new AMOLED screen of around 4.5 inches and featuring 800×480 color display. Its flexible and prototypes were shown off that allowed you to have it in smart phones, and a larger edition of the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
E-Ink introduces Color Triton Displays
E-Ink has almost become synonymous with e-book readers so that the majority of e-readers now doing business have their display based on the e-ink technology. Its not without reason as the benefits of an e-ink display are multiple. Like it offers excellent readability that’s almost as clear as print on a real paper while being extremely low demanding on the battery. The display is also as effortless to read indoors as it is out in bright sunlight. However, there has been only one drawback with e-ink technology so far – its lack of support for color displays.
And now, E Ink Holdings seems to have covered that up as well and it seems to have done the job well enough. E Ink Triton color ePaper, E Ink’s latest development in the field of e-paper display and one that can usher in a new revolution in the development of color e-readers besides of course adding that much needed dash of color.
LG Reveals 2 different Prototypes for Color e-Paper
We saw many new color e-ink technologies get revealed, and LG is not to be left out of the mix, with not one, but two different color e-ink screens.
The first model revealed was fully color e-ink around 9.7 inches and has a resolution of 800×600. The second model is also 9.7 inches and only features a non-color e-ink resolution of 1200×1200 and has as small strip of color on the bottom, around 200×600. You can compare this to the Barnes and Noble Nook, where the top half of the screen is e-ink and the bottom LCD Color/Touchscreen. Both screens display around 4,096 different colors in their resolution. We also have video on this.
New York Times to debut ebook Bestseller list for 2011
The New York times has been an unbiased staple in the Book Review community for the last one-hundred years. It continues to roll with the times with a new Digital eBook Best seller list to be debuted in March of next year.
The New Best Seller List for eBooks will be available in both the print and digital editions of the Times. It will feature both Fiction and Non-Fiction book titles and will be overseen by a third party company that has a track record in monitoring book sales.
It will be absolutely refreshing to have a company that does not sell ebooks, determine the best of the lot. To date, we have had to rely on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble to say whats great and whats not, often promoting their own exclusive authors.
HP Slate 500 delays pre-order shipments
The first Slate by HP should have been shipped already, but reports of Bugs in their operating system prevented the launch. HP has also experienced HIGH demand for their new Tablet that overexeeded the number of devices ordered from the manufacturer. Pre-Order customers were told that they could now get a $100 discount to make up for the delay. HP had to rehire all of the manufacturing staff just to make new units, because they did not expect the Tablet to be ordered by so many people.
Lets hope that other HP slates get developed and shipped, like their WebOS one in the works and others.
Entourage Pocket Edge gets officially announced
It seems like only yesterday that the original Entourage Edge came out, it was just earlier this year. Due to community feedback regarding the size, they just released a Mini edition of it.
Long Story Short, its a dual touch screen tablet, one screen is e-ink the other color LCD. Minor changes to the Webcam and the Mouse was tweaked, and not for the better in this offering.
Its still geared mainly at students, and is a not bad item, but customer service and technical support are non-existent. If you do buy one of these, be prepared to only have your questions addressed on their forums.
That about wraps it up, for this weeks edition of the Good e-Reader Week in Review! You might have noticed we ommited some stories, mainly we focus on the most newsworthy events of the week, essential stories. We know not everyone can follow all of the days news, so if you are casual with your tech fix, we cover it all!
If you want to join a book club, or want to talk shop about e-readers, ebooks, digital publishing and so on, check out our online interactive community, the Good e-Reader Forum.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
